Count the votes. On June 16, with 99% counted, the Atlantic Council called it: right-wing Keiko Fujimori is projected to be Peru's next president, ahead of leftist Roberto Sánchez by a bit over 35,000 votes after a weeklong nail-biter. That margin — roughly the attendance at a mid-table football match — is what stands between the world's No. 2 copper producer and a constitutional rewrite.
Andean political risk is no longer a vibe. It's a coin-flip you can price — and this week the coin landed copper-side up in Lima.
Here's why the desk cares. Sánchez ran on reviewing tax-stability contracts, levying windfall profit taxes, phasing out open-pit mining and redrafting the constitution. In a country where mining is ~60% of exports and roughly $7 billion of copper projects already sit stalled, that platform was a direct shot at the install base: Southern Copper (NYSE: SCC, Grupo México), Glencore ($GLEN) (GLEN), Anglo American ($AAL) (AAL) at Quellaveco, Freeport-McMoRan ($FCX) (FCX), MMG (HK: 1208) at Las Bambas, and the BHP ($BHP) (BHP)/Glencore/Teck Antamina JV. Grupo México already had the operating permit for its $1.8 billion Tía María project revoked in March. Fujimori, by contrast, pitched herself as pro-US and investor-friendly. Our read: a five-year tail risk just got cut off — but a 35,000-vote mandate buys breathing room, not blank cheques. Watch the next blockade.
The live one is Saturday. Colombia votes June 21 in a runoff between far-right Abelardo de la Espriella and leftist Iván Cepeda, a Petro ally, after the two topped the May 31 first round. Colombia is the underexplored copper story — Bogotá has tendered 14 strategic copper regions — but Petro-era reforms widened environmental restrictions, raised taxes and muddied permitting. A Cepeda win, in our view, extends that paralysis; a de la Espriella win is the "stabilize-and-drill" trade. Names exposed: Aris Mining (TSX: ARIS), formalizing artisanal miners around Segovia, and state oil-and-energy champion Ecopetrol (EC). This is a binary. Size positions accordingly.
Cuba is the cautionary tale. On May 1 a US executive order expanded sanctions on Cuba's metals and mining sector. Sherritt ($S) (TSX: S) suspended its direct Cuban JV participation on May 7, repatriated staff, and watched shares fall ~30% to about C$0.175 — a ~C$123 million company. Its model runs on the 50/50 Moa nickel-cobalt JV with Cuba's GNC plus a one-third stake in power producer Energas, feeding the Fort Saskatchewan refinery in Alberta — whose Cuban feedstock was estimated to last only to about mid-June. Sherritt now talks of dissolving and surrendering its Cuban interests and has signed a non-binding term sheet with Gillon Capital for a warrant convertible to 55% of the company. The lesson isn't Cuba-specific: single-jurisdiction, sanctions-adjacent integration is a single point of failure, and the geological quality of Moa didn't save the equity.
The rest of the board. The election action this cycle is Andean; elsewhere the lever is policy, not polls. Chile already voted — José Antonio Kast won 58.3% in December, rewriting the copper-and-lithium rulebook now. The DRC isn't holding an election; its weapon is the cobalt quota regime through 2027 (96,600t for 2026) that drove hydroxide near $26/lb. And Indonesia cut its 2026 nickel ore quota to ~270 Mt from ~375 Mt while dangling, then deferring, a higher royalty. No ballot required to move the cost curve — just a ministry and a pen.